“Saint Pether ... who hold’st th’ Keys av Hivin—
Oi’m poor ... an’ Oi’m old ... comin’ sixty-sivin—
Thru’ booze ... ? Eyah!—partly ... but honust, Oi’ve bin—
Saint Pether ... Och!—won’t ye—plaze—let me—come in?”
—The Derelict
With a feeling of exultation he loped swiftly away. His morning had not been wasted, he reflected. “All over but th’ shoutin’,” he muttered.
“Wish I’d got time to go an’ see that nitchie, though. Can’t make th’ Agency today, now. Well, let’s see how this comes off. I can get that old beggar any old time.”
Then, suddenly, an uneasy thought crossed his mind. What if they didn’t show up. If they were hanging around somewhere close at hand, and had seen him coming and going from Tucker’s. His alert eyes flickered around the rolling stretch of prairie unceasingly, but nothing more disturbing than a few scattered bunches of horses and cattle appeared to his vision. Presently, topping the summit of a small rise on the familiar trail, he came within sight of the detachment again.
Suddenly he pulled up sharply.
“Why, hello!” he ejaculated. “What th’ devil’s up now?”
For, in the distance, he saw a team and wagon outside the dwelling, with two figures scuffling at the horses’ heads, and the wind brought to his ears the sounds of a violent altercation. Jabbing the spurs into the buckskin, he raced towards them, and his speed soon brought him up to the combatants, who were just picking themselves up from a clinch on the ground. In one of them he immediately recognized a rancher in the district named Pryce—commonly known as “Ginger” Pryce, from the somewhat sanguine color of his hair and corresponding temperament. The other, a tall, stooping, shrunken-faced old man, was a stranger to him. The latter’s face was bleeding, and he was gasping for breath from his encounter with his younger antagonist with long, wheezy, asthmatical sobs that shook his emaciated body terribly.
“Here, now! What in h—l’s this racket about?” shouted the Sergeant, dismounting.
Spitting, and breathing heavily, Pryce burst out: “Them hawsses an’ wagon is mine!” He choked with his rage, and paused to regain his wind. “Yu’ ’member I come around to yu’ when they was stole ’bout three weeks ago?” he ran on excitedly. “I was comin’ along th’ trail ’bout a mile nor’west o’ here when I meets this old stiff comin’ sailin’ along with my team an’ wagon, as bold as yu’ like. He says he bought ’em, an’ he’s showed me a bill o’ sale that he says he got off’n th’ feller he bought ’em from ... but I’ll gamble it’s only a faked-up one, an’ he’s th’ feller what stole ’em. I made him drive on here to yore place. Yu’ wasn’t in, so we gets arguin’, an’ he calls me a ‘red-headed rooster.’ I won’t take that off’n any man—old or young.”
“Why didn’t yu’ put th’ boots to him while yu’ was at it?” said Ellis, with sneering sarcasm. “He’s only an old man an’ I guess yu’ could easy do it.